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Updated: June 6, 2025
Our armor-bearers carried our ice-axes, alpenstocks, and other implements for us. We were mounted upon very small donkeys, as a measure of safety; in time of peril we could straighten our legs and stand up, and let the donkey walk from under. Still, I cannot recommend this sort of animal at least for excursions of mere pleasure because his ears interrupt the view.
When we had walked half an hour, we were fairly into the swing and humor of the undertaking, so we cleared for action; that is to say, we got a boy whom we met to carry our alpenstocks and satchels and overcoats and things for us; that left us free for business.
"Three or four thousand feet ought to put us on the summit. Have the chance, anyhow, to see that stalled train." "Of course it wouldn't be an achievement like the ascent of Rainier," she tempered, "but we should have chances enough to use our alpenstocks before we're through; and it should be a magnificent view; all the great peaks from Oregon to British Columbia rising around."
We waited in wind, hail, and snow till all vestige of the track by which we had come our only guide back if the storm continued was lost except the holes made by the Alpenstocks. The snow drifted over, and did not fill these so quickly. Not knowing but that the storm might last two days, as is frequently the case, I reluctantly gave the order to go down. In an hour we got below the storm.
At noon we conquered the last impediment we stood at last upon the summit, and without the loss of a single man except the mule that ate the glycerin. Our great achievement was achieved the possibility of the impossible was demonstrated, and Harris and I walked proudly into the great dining-room of the Riffelberg Hotel and stood our alpenstocks up in the corner.
The whole Battery had been provided with Italian greatcoats and other Italian mountain equipment, white Alpine boots lined with fur, alpenstocks, spiked snow grips, which could be fastened on to one's boots like skates, and white clothing to put on over the top of everything else, to render us invisible against a snowy background.
Sometimes the animals were so bold that Nansen could go up to them and take photographs. When a fine brute had been shot the others still lay quiet, and only by hitting them with their alpenstocks could the travellers get rid of them. Then the animals would waddle off in single file and plunge head first into the water, which seemed to boil up around them.
He had done a good deal of climbing, had worn out and lost dozens of alpenstocks, and had brought home a case of Swiss carved work for his friends. "There's a clock for your den, Vixen I shall bring it to-morrow with a little cock-robin that comes out of his nest and sings no end of jolly." "How lovely!" cried Violet. The tall eight-day clock in a corner of the hall chimed the half-hour.
At ten minutes of eleven, on the morning of the second of July, our small cavalcade, with the two exasperating donkeys at the head laden with mats, bags of provisions, extra clothing, alpenstocks, spiked shoes, and coils of stout rope, filed down the streets of Bayazid, followed by a curious rabble.
But they are peacefully disposed goatherds, who, alpenstocks in hand, are endeavoring to see "what in the world those queer-looking things are, coming up the road." Their tuneful noise, as they play on some kind of an instrument, greets our ears from a dozen mountain-slopes round about us, as we put our shoulders to the wheel, and gradually approach the summit.
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